Monthly Archives: June 2011

Washington DC is full of monuments. Some of them we all know, some of them I go by and have no idea who the person is or what they did. Everybody knows the Lincoln and the Jefferson and the Washington: most people ignore what must be one of the most powerful and compelling pieces of […]

Recently Senator Rand Paul argued that wanting universal health care was a form of slavery. And his father, Ron Paul, similarly argued that Social Security and Welfare are also forms of slavery. Ron Paul also argued, on Hard­ball with Chris Math­ews, that he would have voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, because the Act, […]

There’s a kind of beat called a “shuffle.” You’ve heard it thousands of times, maybe without knowing it. It’s an amazing beat when it’s played well, a unique combination of relaxed and urgent. Wikepedia has a long explanation which will be hard to make sense of. I think of a shuffle as triplets—1,2,3—played against four […]

Why can’t I have an indentured servant? Let’s say you’re down on your luck, jobs are scarce; I offer you room and board for three years, and in return I own you. You clean my house, tend my garden etc. It’s a voluntary agreement: at the end of the three years you’re free, or you […]

The dollar is weak! President X’s policies have weakened the dollar! We need a strong dollar, a dollar with vigor and health! Political debates about money are never just about money. Money is central to who we are. We buy things that express out taste, out political beliefs, our “lifestyle choices,” and these things confer […]

We often see polling showing that Americans are remarkably ignorant of our history. They can’t name the dates of the Civil War, they don’t know what happened at the Alamo or why: they don’t know the Soviet Union was on our side in WWII. Does that really matter? You could argue there’s really no reason […]